Beauty, Ideas, Imagination -- That's Great Literature

Updated Oct. 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

I pity Melik Kaylan ("Pamuk's 'Reality'," editorial page, Oct. 16). Not because he can't figure out "what happens" in the works of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, but because understanding "what happens" is his absurd measure of good literature.

Count me among those "too ashamed to admit [my] stupidity," but I can tell you that, contrary to Mr. Kaylan's dismissal, Mr. Pamuk's novel "My Name Is Red" offers a fascinating discourse on the differing nature of perception between the...